Search Results for: exchange
Babel: Around the World in 20 Languages
If you were to master the twenty languages discussed in Babel, you could talk with three quarters of the world's population. But what makes these languages stand out amid the world's estimated 6,500 tongues?Gaston Dorren delves deep into the linguistic oddities and extraordinary stories of these diverse lingua francas, tracing their origins and their sometimes bloody rise to greatness. He deciphers their bewildering array of scripts, presents the gems and gaps in their vocabularies and charts their coinages and loans. He even explains how their grammars order their speakers' worldview.Combining linguistics and cultural history, Babel takes us on an intriguing tour of the world, addressing such questions as how tiny Portugal spawned a major world language and Holland didn't, why Japanese women talk differently from men, what it means for Russian to be 'related' to English, and how non-alphabetic scripts, such as those of India and China, do the same job as our 26 letters. Not to mention the conundrums of why Vietnamese has four forms for 'I', or how Tamil pronouns keep humans and deities apart.Babel will change the way you look at the world and how we all speak.
Human Compatible
Creating superior intelligence would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, according to the world's pre-eminent AI expert, it could also be the last.In this groundbreaking book, Stuart Russell explains why he has come to consider his own discipline an existential threat to his own species, and lays out how we can change course before it's too late. There is no one better placed to assess the promise and perils of the dominant technology of the future than Russell, who has spent decades at the forefront of AI research. Through brilliant analogies and crisp, lucid prose, he explains how AI actually works, how it has an enormous capacity to improve our lives - but why we must ensure that we never lose control of machines more powerful than we are. Here Russell shows how we can avert the worst threats by reshaping the foundations of AI to guarantee that machines pursue our objectives, not theirs.Profound, urgent and visionary, Human Compatible is the one book everyone needs to read to understand a future that is coming sooner than we think.
Le voleur d’ombres (Best)
Et si l'adulte que vous êtes devenu rencontrait l'enfant que vous étiez ?Enfant, il vole les ombres de ceux qu'il croise... et chacune de ces ombres lui confie un secret. Malgré lui, il entend les rêves, les espoirs et les chagrins de ceux qu'il aime. Que faire de cet étrange pouvoir... ?Quelques années plus tard, le " voleur d'ombres " est devenu étudiant en médecine... Est-il encore capable de deviner ce qui pourrait rendre heureux ses proches, comme Sophie avec laquelle il étudie la médecine, ou Luc, son meilleur ami, qui voudrait changer de vie ?Et lui, sait-il où le bonheur l'attend ?Amour d'une mère. Inoubliable premier amour. Amour qui s'achève... Amitié longue comme la vie... Le Voleur d'ombres est une histoire d'amour au pluriel." Son roman le plus émouvant. " Paris Match" Le héros du Voleur d'ombres rappelle la figure désormais légendaire de Holden Caulfield, le héros de L'attrape-Cœurs de J.-D. Salinger. " Philippe Reinhard – Le Télégramme
Americanah
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY S WOMEN S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2014.
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a powerful story of love, race and identity.
As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?
Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today s globalized world.
From the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun, a powerful story of love, race and identity.
As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?
Fearless, gripping, spanning three continents and numerous lives, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Americanah is a richly told story of love and expectation set in today s globalized world.
Bookshops & Bonedust
When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn't always what we seek.In Bookshops & Bonedust, a prequel to Legends & Lattes, New York Times bestselling author Travis Baldree takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and second-hand books.Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned.Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it.What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't possibly imagine.Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.
Caméléon – Zoubir Souissi
Les dictionnaires définissent le caméléon, outre l’animal bien connu pour s’adapter à la couleur et au décor ambiant pour s’y fondre, comme une personne versatile qui change facilement d’opinion. Cet exercice qui implique des pérégrinations dans les méandres des mouvances politiciennes, les hommes s’y sont adonnés depuis la nuit des temps, parfois avec délectation. Caméléons, girouettes ou plus prosaïquement opportunistes, ils naviguent sous toutes les latitudes, dans tous les continents et tous les systèmes, sans vergogne, ni états d’âme. La finalité pour eux est de s’agripper aux plis du pouvoir et de ne pas lâcher prise quelles que puissent être les pressions. Foin de moralité, d’éthique et de grands mots. Pour ces personnes l’expression « la fin justifie
les moyens » est la devise, le mot d’ordre. C’est l’histoire d’un de ces personnages qui est racontée dans cet ouvrage. Le récit se passe dans une Algérie contemporaine ravagée par l’insécurité et le terrorisme.
Il aurait pu se dérouler ailleurs tant le sujet qui nous intéresse est véritablement mondialiste. Mais au niveau national, comme au niveau local, les caméléons de tout acabit, ont encore de beaux jours devant eux. Ainsi est faite la nature humaine.
The Poetics of Space
A beloved multidisciplinary treatise comes to Penguin Classics
Since its initial publication in 1958, The Poetics of Space has been a muse to philosophers, architects, writers, psychologists, critics, and readers alike. The rare work of irresistibly inviting philosophy, Bachelard’s seminal work brims with quiet revelations and stirring, mysterious imagery. This lyrical journey takes as its premise the emergence of the poetic image and finds an ideal metaphor in the intimate spaces of our homes. Guiding us through a stream of meditations on poetry, art, and the blooming of consciousness itself, Bachelard examines the domestic places that shape and hold our dreams and memories. Houses and rooms; cellars and attics; drawers, chests, and wardrobes; nests and shells; nooks and corners: No space is too vast or too small to be filled by our thoughts and our reveries. In Bachelard’s enchanting spaces, “We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”
This new edition features a foreword by Mark Z. Danielewski, whose bestselling novel House of Leaves drew inspiration from Bachelard’s writings, and an introduction by internationally renowned philosopher Richard Kearney who explains the book’s enduring importance and its role within Bachelard’s remarkable career.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Since its initial publication in 1958, The Poetics of Space has been a muse to philosophers, architects, writers, psychologists, critics, and readers alike. The rare work of irresistibly inviting philosophy, Bachelard’s seminal work brims with quiet revelations and stirring, mysterious imagery. This lyrical journey takes as its premise the emergence of the poetic image and finds an ideal metaphor in the intimate spaces of our homes. Guiding us through a stream of meditations on poetry, art, and the blooming of consciousness itself, Bachelard examines the domestic places that shape and hold our dreams and memories. Houses and rooms; cellars and attics; drawers, chests, and wardrobes; nests and shells; nooks and corners: No space is too vast or too small to be filled by our thoughts and our reveries. In Bachelard’s enchanting spaces, “We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.”
This new edition features a foreword by Mark Z. Danielewski, whose bestselling novel House of Leaves drew inspiration from Bachelard’s writings, and an introduction by internationally renowned philosopher Richard Kearney who explains the book’s enduring importance and its role within Bachelard’s remarkable career.
For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The Code Breaker
'The Code Breaker’s confident, cinematic style makes Crispr accessible like never before, taking readers on a journey that is exciting, as well as ethically treacherous.' – The Financial Times
'A page-turner. It weaves history and contemporary events into a narrative propelled by the career of its protagonist, Jennifer Doudna.' – The Economist
‘Nobody knows this stuff and these people, and explains them, quite like Isaacson. If you need to know about CRISPR – and you do – this is the place to start.' – The Sunday Times
The best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns.
In 2012, Nobel Prize winning scientist Jennifer Doudna hit upon an invention that will transform the future of the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA.
Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. It has already been deployed to cure deadly diseases, fight the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and make inheritable changes in the genes of babies.
But what does that mean for humanity? Should we be hacking our own DNA to make us less susceptible to disease? Should we democratise the technology that would allow parents to enhance their kids?
After discovering this CRISPR, Doudna is now wrestling these even bigger issues.
The Code Breaker is an examination of how life as we know it is about to change – and a brilliant portrayal of the woman leading the way.
'The Code Breaker’s confident, cinematic style makes Crispr accessible like never before, taking readers on a journey that is exciting, as well as ethically treacherous.' The Financial Times
'The CRISPR history holds obvious appeal for Walter Isaacson, a biographer of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci. In “The Code Breaker” he reprises several of his previous themes — science, genius, experiment, code, thinking different — and devotes a full length book to a female subject for the first time. Jennifer Doudna, a genuine heroine for our time, may be the code breaker of the book’s title, but she is only part of Isaacson’s story... The Code Breaker” is in some respects a journal of our 2020 plague year. By the final chapter, Isaacson has enrolled in a vaccine trial' - New York Times
‘Nobody knows this stuff and these people, and explains them, quite like Isaacson. If you need to know about CRISPR — and you do — this is the place to start' - The Sunday Times
'A page-turner. It weaves history and contemporary events into a narrative propelled by the career of its protagonist, Jennifer Doudna.' – The Economist
‘Nobody knows this stuff and these people, and explains them, quite like Isaacson. If you need to know about CRISPR – and you do – this is the place to start.' – The Sunday Times
The best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns.
In 2012, Nobel Prize winning scientist Jennifer Doudna hit upon an invention that will transform the future of the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA.
Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. It has already been deployed to cure deadly diseases, fight the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and make inheritable changes in the genes of babies.
But what does that mean for humanity? Should we be hacking our own DNA to make us less susceptible to disease? Should we democratise the technology that would allow parents to enhance their kids?
After discovering this CRISPR, Doudna is now wrestling these even bigger issues.
The Code Breaker is an examination of how life as we know it is about to change – and a brilliant portrayal of the woman leading the way.
'The Code Breaker’s confident, cinematic style makes Crispr accessible like never before, taking readers on a journey that is exciting, as well as ethically treacherous.' The Financial Times
'The CRISPR history holds obvious appeal for Walter Isaacson, a biographer of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci. In “The Code Breaker” he reprises several of his previous themes — science, genius, experiment, code, thinking different — and devotes a full length book to a female subject for the first time. Jennifer Doudna, a genuine heroine for our time, may be the code breaker of the book’s title, but she is only part of Isaacson’s story... The Code Breaker” is in some respects a journal of our 2020 plague year. By the final chapter, Isaacson has enrolled in a vaccine trial' - New York Times
‘Nobody knows this stuff and these people, and explains them, quite like Isaacson. If you need to know about CRISPR — and you do — this is the place to start' - The Sunday Times
La personnalité normale et pathologique : les structures mentales, le caractère, les symptômes
Dans toute personnalité, il convient de déterminer ce qui relève d'une structure de base stable et définitive ou d'un simple aménagement encore mobile et malléable; on arrive ainsi à définir les notions de normalité, d'immaturité affective et de maladie, de façon beaucoup plus féconde.Jean Bergeret passe en revue les différents modèles de structuration de la personnalité, tant d'un point de vue métapsychologique que sous l'angle de l'évolution psychogénétique, mais toujours en se référant àla théorie psychanalytique. Le caractère est défini, à partir de chaque structure de base de la personnalité, comme l'expression relationnelle et psychologique de cette structure tant que celle-ci demeure en état de ""normalité"", c'est-à-dire d'adaptation aux réalités internes et externes (ce qui ne veut pas dire seulement soumission). Les symptômes sont vus au contraire comme les manifestations relationnelles émanant d'une structure de base en état de décompensation. Autrement dit, une structure de base en hystérique, par exemple, peut en état ""normal"" donner naissance à un caractère hystérique et, en état de décompensation, à des symptômes hystériques (signes d'une hystérie-maladie.)La pathologie caractérielle traitée de façon séparée et originale: l'auteur distingue les ""névroses"" de caractère, les ""psychoses"" de caractère et les ""perversités"" de caractère. Une nouvelle conception de la notion de ""perversion"" est proposée.Ce classique dans le domaine de la psychopathologie représente la synthèse des recherches qui ont valu aux hypothèses de Jean Bergeret de nombreux échos et échanges. Il fonde les travaux ultérieurs de l'auteurconsacrés aux états-limites, à la dépression, à la toxicomanie et à la notion de violence fondamentale.Au sommaire:Chapitre 1: Structures et normalité; Chapitre 2: La notion de structure de la personnalité; Chapitre 3: Les grandes structures de base; Chapitre 4: Les astructurations; Chapitre 5: Le caractère; Chapitre 6: Les traits de caractère; Chapitre 7: La pathologie du caractère. About the Author Psychiatre, psychanalyste, professeur émérite de psychologie à l'université Louis Lumière Lyon 2.
Bookshops & Bonedust
When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn't always what we seek.In Bookshops & Bonedust, a prequel to Legends & Lattes, New York Times bestselling author Travis Baldree takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and second-hand books.Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned.Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it.What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't possibly imagine.Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.